From the director who brought you horrific violence set in the Scottish highlands, Vietnam, and ancient Central America, comes another war story with exploding sinew and projectile body parts catapulting to and fro. Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge is the based on a true story film following Desmond Doss, a Medal of Honor winner and conscientious objector who is credited with single-handedly saving 75 lives during the battle of Okinawa. Hamstrung by the lack of major studio funding, but relying on the experience of its war movie veteran director, Hacksaw Ridge is a compelling portrait of a man who would not compromise his particular religion or values even in the face of overwhelming chaos.

Broken down into thirds, Hacksaw Ridge is somewhat a three-act play starting with how the home-front shaped the man, then how the Army fought the man, and finally, how the man overcame the mayhem. Growing up in rural western Virginia somewhere near Lynchburg, Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield, The Amazing Spider-Man 2) is an earnest do-gooder sporting an aw-shucks demeanor. Transformed from a rough and tumble childhood where a stray blow convinced Desmond to never lift a hand in violence again, his Seventh Day Adventist faith shaped Desmond’s preference to protect rather than harm.

Desmond learned the art of protection when forced to jump between his cowering mother (Rachel Griffiths, Saving Mr. Banks) and his severely emotionally damaged, alcoholic father (Hugo Weaving, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies) who preferred to wave around the family firearm when he was on a true bender. Shell-shocked from the Great War and without today’s PTSD diagnosis, Tom Doss spends his days sharing booze with his dead friends at the local war cemetery and casting the evil eye at any and all unfortunate souls who cross his path.

Wanting to do his share for the war effort like every other able-bodied male of his generation, Desmond enlists in the Army hoping to be a combat medic, better to patch them up than put holes in them. Employing a cinematic timeline rather than real life, Desmond meets, falls in love with, and proposes to his girlfriend Dorothy (Teresa Palmer, Knight of Cups) at this time; otherwise, how else would the audience get the tearful bus station goodbye of, “You better come back to me!” Once the Army finds out what they have on their hands, Desmond may get sent back to Dorothy sooner than expected.

Company Drill Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn), the sole American actor in this American tale, and Company Commander Captain Glover (Sam Worthington, Wrath of the Titans), pray as hard for Desmond to leave as Desmond prays for fortitude. Trying to ship him out on a psychiatric discharge and finally a court martial for failure to obey orders, Desmond fights to go to war as his brothers around him view him with every expression from skepticism to hatred. The other troops in the barracks are cookie cutter caricatures we’ve all seen before and it is a challenge to try and tell them apart. There is the short, Italian guy named Vito in the next bunk, the good looking model type with the muscled body to match who goes by Hollywood, the inevitable guy named Tex, and the resident bully, Smitty (Luke Bracey, The November Man). Once everybody runs onto the battlefield, even these descriptors are useless; we can only decipher Desmond and Sergeant Howell.

Vince Vaughn is in a tricky spot. We’ve all seen intimidating and in-your-face drill sergeants before, especially R. Lee Ermey from Full Metal Jacket, the instructor all future boot camp drill sergeants will forever be compared to. Vaughn marches down the barracks aisle barking at the scared recruits, issuing nicknames, and does his best to separate himself as his own character, but there is not much he can do to avoid the comparison. The movie’s center boot camp section is also where I thought about the audience’s decision to identify with Desmond. Private Doss is the protagonist in every scene so it should be easy for Mel Gibson to have us sympathize with Desmond through thick and thin. However, we’ve all seen war movies set in the Pacific Theater before and know the slaughter these boys will soon encounter. Do we really blame them for being wary of Desmond’s motivation and intentions? They will not be able to rely on him to have their backs; a scenario Sergeant Howell and Captain Glover drill into the soldiers’ psyches.

The battlefield is where Gibson’s limited finances shine the brightest. The camera, helmed by Director of Photography Simon Duggan (Warcraft), stays glued to faces and explosions. I strained waiting for the pull-back and the glorious, epic shot of the whole battlefield. Nope. We were never going to get it. The battle carnage was filmed in the middle of an Australian dairy farm with houses and farm structures on either side; the camera couldn’t pull back. Hacksaw Ridge will enjoy comparisons to Saving Private Ryan due to the World War II weaponry and cut throat viciousness, but visually, it is stunted and lacks Spielberg’s grand vision. Written by Pulitzer and Tony-Award winner Robert Schenkkan and Andrew Knight (The Water Diviner), Desmond Doss’s story is tight from humble beginning to eventual hero status and the horror of war is grotesque enough to make the audience reconsider their blood lust. However, Hacksaw Ridge lacks the filmmaking power and true gut-punch to join the ranks of the serious war epics.